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August 15 · Issue #105 · View online
Level Up delivers a curated newsletter for leaders in tech. A project by https://patkua.com. Ideal for busy people such as Tech Leads, Engineering Managers, VPs of Engineering, CTOs and more.
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Leaders manage state transitions In my coaching sessions with leaders, I often return to the idea that leaders are responsible for managing state transitions. Some of these transitions might be personal such as trying to break free of a chaotic schedule full of emergencies and reactive behaviour, to a schedule with enough thinking time to plan ahead and take more intentional actions. Other transitions might be team-related, such as inheriting a distrusting, low-performing team and working with the team to turn it into a high trust, high-performing one. Others yet might be structural, such as making an implicit process explicit or streamlining an existing process. It’s essential that leaders are aware of their current state and decide if they have an opportunity to improve it with a state transition. Unfortunately too many leaders I know see their role as enforcing the current state (i.e. rules, processes, and structures) instead of working to improve the system for all. Your challenge for this week is to be more deliberate about observing your current state. Do you see opportunities to improve it? What can you do today to take one step towards an improved state? Enjoy this week’s newsletter and be sure to pass it on to a friend or colleague. Want to level up your technical leadership skills? Sign up for the online workshop, “Shortcut to Tech Leadership” or take a self-paced course at the http://techlead.academy.
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Be more intentional with your state transitions
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Looking for a VP Engineering Riders & City (Berlin)
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Mikhail Chernykh's Story at StaffEng as Technical Lead at Indeed
Reading time: 8mins Not all technical leaders are managers and the StaffEng website showcases many examples. In this interview, Mikhail Chernykh (@netme) shares his journey as a technical leader (and appreciate the shout out to this newsletter as a resource 🙏).
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6 Principles for Building a World Class TPM Team
Reading time: 18mins If you’ve worked in any decently sized company, you’ve probably worked with a Technical Program Manager (TPM) before. It’s a curious role, one which I’ve written about before, and one which relies on often needing to lead through influence, rather than rely on managerial authority (and why you’ll find it in this section this week). Senior Director at DoorDash Sophia Vicent shares the principles they use to build a strong TPM team.
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Performance management in tough times
Reading time: 8mins A key part of managers is managing the performance of the system. This article from Patti P. Phillips (@ppphillips) and Jack J. Phillips challenges you to look at if your performance management system is suited for managing remote employees.
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Level up your time management skills (click the banner to find out more)
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Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021
Reading time: 30mins I always look forward to reading Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey to understand trends in tech. This year, they had 80K+ respondents! Two fascinating picks (there are many) is that 90% of respondents use Git and Clojure developers have the highest median salary! 🤯
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Turning Microservices Inside-Out
Reading time: 16mins A fantastic architectural pattern to consider with microservices authored by Bilgin Ibryam (@bibryam) and Thomas Betts (@thomasbetts). What I like about this article is that it has an intentional approach to considering how services provide data as a feed. Since this is an external API, teams should design them deliberately.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software Trends for 2021
Reading time: 7mins It’s hard to ignore the impact that AI (or mostly ML) has on software today. This article by Shelby Hiter highlights 4 trends to watch out for.
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🌟🌟🌟 Reach thousands of engineering leaders around the world. Maybe you want to share a leadership role you’re looking to fill? Interested in becoming a sponsor? Get in touch for details. 🌟🌟🌟
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LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky decides to allow employees to work remotely for good
Reading time: 4mins While companies like Apple are cracking down on debates on remote working, LinkedIn announced their decision to support a more flexible mode of working, rather than a single policy of “in office”, “part-time remote” or “full-remote.”
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Goals, Problems, Solutions
Reading time: 3mins The folks at Stay Sassy (@staysaasy) provide a nice simple framework for navigating conflict which I wholeheartedly agree with. It’s amazing to discover a lot of conflict comes from people solving different problems!
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Write compelling and unbiased job descriptions
Reading time: 3mins
Jade Rubick (@jaderubick) offers some great advice when writing (and reviewing job descriptions). I’ve drawn on a lot of tools he shares and with a link to a number of other articles on hiring and recruiting.
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A great set of links to a number of companies offer 4-day work weeks (4DWW). Click the tweet to find the link
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@ There's a large-ish list of companies doing 4DWW here (maintained by my former employer): https://t.co/fVPd7nQLLO
The extra day was critical decompressing time for me, especially since I have a toddler that demands my attention every waking minute of the weekends.
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Jez has a great thread rant on dealing with COTS. Click it to read more
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Everyone sensible in IT has been saying for years that if you buy COTS (commercial off-the-shelf software packages) you shouldn’t customize it - it’s wildly expensive and you end up with something hard to maintain and almost impossible to upgrade.
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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please send me feedback and share with others!
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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